Fallen: An Angel Romance

by D. G. Whiskey

  Probably to cover the vampire’s approach.

  Certain types of mages worked well together.

  The third mage was a woman with snarled hair and crazy eyes that darted back and forth erratically. The terror and fear hit Zara before she could complete her mental assessments.

  Oh, Light!

  She almost pushed Grace at the Dark mages and turned tail to run. If she distracted them, maybe she could get away with her life. After all this, she was going to die here.

  No.

  Her practice with Drake had prepared her for something like this. The Dark mage’s projections rolled through her, but she cleared her mind and observed them and how they were not truly a part of her.

  She had friends with her. Friends she had to protect. Alex drew in a raspy breath and Grace had dropped her head between her knees, clutching it and moaning.

  She expanded the calmness, letting it flow from her and giving it Light to shield the friends by her side. A moat formed, keeping the terror at bay.

  Darkness dropped across the hallway, and the sounds of shoes slapping the floor came fast and furious.

  Hurriedly, Zara sent a blast of Light forward in an arc. It wasn’t a powerful beam intended to cause serious harm to the Dark mages, but it beat the Darkness back and revealed the streaking figure of the vampire, already halfway to them. She took stock of her options in a millisecond and send a minor stream of Light at the legs of a large bookcase lining the hall.

  The legs shone as they bent inward, screeching against the floor and unbalancing the heavy piece of furniture. As it teetered, she cursed the vampire’s feet with as little Dark as she could get away with—not enough to trip him, but enough that he couldn’t change his course and duck out of the way before the bookcase collapsed on top of him and bore him to the ground with a tremendous crash.

  Dust billowed out in all directions. The opposing Darkness and terrorizing emotions dropped away as the mages down the hall stared in shock.

  Grace and Alex looked at her with that same shock, like they’d seen nothing like it before.

  “What?” she asked, defensive. “Drake told me to use as little energy as possible in a fight.”

  “Clever,” Alex said.

  “That was awesome,” Grace chipped in.

  They had only a moment of respite before the Darkness rushed at them again. This time it wasn’t intended as a cover but had serious heat behind it. Alex and Grace both grunted with pain, but it didn’t affect Zara at all.

  She wouldn’t let the Dark mage hurt her friends. Gathering herself, she sent a concentrated blast of calm through the Darkness. It was an attack she’d thought up a few days ago—soothing someone took a relatively small amount of energy. The difficulty came in maintaining the right state of mind.

  The Darkness disappeared once more, revealing the Darkbringer slumping to the floor, a lazy smile on his face, eyes closed as he drifted into a stupor.

  Zara turned to the third mage, but she broke and ran immediately, leaving her comrades behind as her own terror took control.

  “Good enough,” Alex said, taking her arm as she moved to follow. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Not yet,” Zara said. She took a few seconds to shake off the bloodlust of battle. “We have to find Sophie.”

  She sprinted to the stairwell, cursing the valuable minutes spent dealing with the group of mages. Thundering down the stairs, she didn’t worry about keeping quiet. There were many sounds drifting through the old house. Screams had been infrequent, but bangs and thuds came from all around, indicating widespread fighting.

  Finally reaching the main floor, Zara slipped into Farsight again.

  Sophie was down the hall, hiding in one of the sitting areas as five Dark mages rounded the corner. On her hands and knees behind a couch and peering around the side, she didn’t see the other Dark mage sneaking up behind her. Zara screamed a warning Sophie couldn’t hear as the mage sent a bolt of Darkness into her back from point-blank range, knocking her to the floor.

  Rage filled Zara, the heat of it searing her mind, inflaming her, making her lose all sense of self-preservation.

  She charged into the hallway, heedless of the danger.

  “Zara! Come back!” Alex yelled after her, but his voice barely registered. Sophie needed help now. She couldn’t afford to take things slowly.

  It didn’t take long for her to get to the sitting area with the full out sprint she used. As she thundered down the hall, the Dark mages looked at her with surprise on their faces. They didn’t expect to see one girl attack six of them.

  Bolts of darkness slammed into her, but she didn’t even slow. It only fed her rage.

  The mage closest to her backed away a step, fear contorting his face. “It’s her!” he yelled.

  Putting all of her anger and rage into it, she concentrated a blast of Light into as narrow a beam as she could. Heedless of the cost, she focused it to a needle-thin spear and loosed it at the man.

  The Light shot forth like a laser, ripping into the center of his chest with unerring accuracy. He fell without a sound, his face still locked in a frightened grimace.

  The others stared at his body, stunned.

  Zara considered nonlethal ways to take down the other mages, like the Darkbringer she’d put to sleep upstairs. She didn’t have the calmness of mind to pull that off right now. More than that, she wanted them to die.

  She shaped more lasers of Light, and they lanced out from her fingertips, striking each of the intruders and felling them.

  Within seconds of her approach, all six mages lay dead on the ground. She hadn’t even slowed her sprint.

  Approaching the couch Sophie had hidden behind, Zara skidded to a stop and knelt beside her. She rolled her friend onto her back.

  She still breathed.

  “Thank the Light,” Zara muttered.

  Alex and Grace caught up to her. Each of them looked at the bodies, visibly shaken by the ruthless efficiency with which Zara had dispatched her enemies.

  She didn’t have time to deal with their opinion of her.

  Unsure if the Light could heal damage caused by Darkness, Zara reached toward Sophie with her ability but was rebuffed by an angry Darkness that swirled within her friend’s body, weakening her from the inside.

  How do I get rid of this Darkness?

  She needed to draw it out like a poison.

  Struck by a surge of inspiration, Zara tapped into her own reserve of Darkness and used the reverse tactic, using the draining ability to hunt down the Darkness and pull it from Sophie. It filled Zara instead, pumping her muscles up, giving her a surge of physical energy.

  Once the Darkness was gone, she switched to the Light and fed it into Sophie’s body until the other blonde’s eyes snapped open.

  “Zara?” she asked. “You came for me?”

  “Of course. That’s what friends are for, right?” Zara helped her sit up, and then Alex reached down to pull first Sophie, then Zara, to their feet.

  “We have to get out of here,” Alex said. The sounds echoing through the large house had become more ominous. Screams were far too common.

  “Let me take the lead,” Zara said. “Don’t get drawn into a fight unless you have no other choice.”

  Alex shook his head. “I can’t let you fight alone.”

  She let the Light flash from her fingers. “I’ve got this.”

  It was shocking how calm she felt. The training Draconel had put her through gave her the confidence to use her powers under pressure, and the steady presence of both the Light and the Dark inside her lent her calm.

  They met three pairs of Dark mages as they dashed through the halls, and all six mages came to the same fate as their compatriots, taken down by Zara’s Light before they even knew what they were up against. She had to protect her friends, and the best way for her to do that was to take out the threats immediately.

  The final pair of Dark mages had been outside the dining hall door. When they f
ell, another mage stepped into the hall.

  She fired a laser of Light at him, but he called up a shield of Darkness with blinding speed. Her feet caught up with each other, sending her sprawling off balance so unexpectedly that she hit the ground hard.

  Angel Killer.

  It was the first one she’d seen.

  The two Dark mages she’d taken down pushed themselves to their feet. Zara stared, horrified, as they ran at her, faces blank.

  “Zara!” Sophie screamed her name.

  They were on her before she could collect herself, jumping on top of her and pinning her down, fists striking her body with blows that rocked her petite frame. If it wasn’t for the physical strength lent by the Darkness she’d drained from Sophie’s body, she wouldn’t have been able to take the abuse. It wasn’t enough to give her the strength to heave them off her.

  Losing her cool, she resorted to the first instinctive response that crossed her mind, blasting the undead forms with Light.

  They fell on top of her, lifeless once more. Alex and Grace ran up and helped pull them off her.

  Drake’s voice came back to her from one of her seemingly countless lessons.

  The Light is the most basic but the most useful form of magic. It can interfere with Dark magic and sever the connection between a Dark mage and his spells.

  She scrambled to her feet, but the necromancy had served its purpose—giving the Angel Killer time to approach and get within range to jump on her and drain her.

  As much as she’d practiced using magic, she’d had no training in the martial arts. If it came to a hand to hand struggle with a bigger and stronger man, she wouldn’t come out on top.

  She only had one chance.

  Forming her Light into a dial, she peered into the future. Immediately, dozens of ghostly shapes sprang from the Angel Killer, but only two were solid enough to worry about. She didn’t know which one to focus on, indecision freezing her.

  Reacting on instinct, she pretended to stumble to the side, opening her right side up for an attack.

  The future versions of the Angel Killer merged to one form. He lunged toward her, a second behind the shadow she saw.

  She ducked under his arm and dodged past him, wrapping her hand around his neck as she jumped onto his back. Bringing her own Dark energy to bear, she drained him before he could react to the sudden reversal of his fortunes.

  The more energy she drained from him, the better she felt. Strong, like she could knock down a solid rock wall. Fast, like she could outrun a horse.

  Pouring more of her energy into the effort, she drained him past the point of no return and let him slump to the floor, lifeless.

  She stretched, feeling the power arc through her muscles, the limitless possibilities in front of her. It was addictive.

  Turning back the way she’d come, Alex, Grace and Sophie looked at her with astonishment and more than a little wariness.

  This time, she’d earned their fear.

  Alex couldn’t look away.

  Zara stood over the fallen body of the Angel Killer, Darkness and Light shimmering over her skin in tandem, dancing together in a way that shouldn’t have been possible.

  She was gorgeous, and she was deadly.

  Did she scare him? He’d told himself no, over and over again, but had he been lying to himself?

  She was magic, personified. He had never been more certain than when he saw the way she bent it to her will. Light, Dark, it didn’t matter. She was its mistress.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “Where’s the escape tunnel?”

  Grace hurried up to lead the way. She tripped over the Angel Killer’s body, but the stumble turned into a wide spin that barely slowed her momentum.

  Alex brought up the rear with Sophie, keeping an eye on the girl in case she showed any lingering ill effects from the damage she’d taken earlier. It gave him time to watch Zara and to think.

  She made a devastatingly effective fighter. It was hard to believe the timid creature he’d saved from two Dark mages little more than a month ago was felling foes at an alarming rate, in creative ways that demonstrated a mastery of the magic that most mages didn't achieve in an entire lifetime.

  With the skill and power she displayed, she might even be a match for an angel.

  The thought gave him an uneasy feeling, but it would never come to that. Zara was good, despite the Darkness inside her.

  Grace led them to a bookcase set into the north wall. Twisting an ornamental wooden medallion out of the way to reveal a keypad, she pressed a combination and the bookcase slid to the side.

  The passageway stretched away, sloping downward and choked thick with dust. The door slid closed and locked behind them. Sophie pressed a button to deactivate the keypad—they wouldn’t be followed from this direction.

  The trek through the stone passage was uneventful, but it took half an hour. None of them were willing to break the silence of the corridor, fixated on the tragedy they left behind.

  The heavyset door on the other side looked like a bank vault door. Alex heaved it open, struggling to move the weight even on well-oiled hinges. Zara assisted him, and the door moved with ease—she was still flush with energy drained from the Angel Killer.

  The thought made him shy away just a little, avoiding skin on skin contact with her more than necessary.

  They locked the door to the passageway behind them—more assurance that the escape tunnel couldn’t be followed to track them. Even if Angel Killers looked into the past to find out where they’d gone, the deactivated keypad would stymie them. If they broke it down, then the vault door would stand between them and their pursuers.

  The safe house was a narrow, four-story house with two small bedrooms on each floor. The escape tunnel exited into the basement, along with four other tunnels. The front door was just as serious as the vault doors locking the passages from Lighthaven.

  They sat in the small living room on the main floor.

  “I can’t believe no one else has made it out yet,” Grace said.

  Sophie shook her head. “I was on the first floor when they came inside. It felt like they attacked from every direction at once. They must have broken into every first-floor window and hopped the wall at the back. I thought one was going to catch me right at the start, but…”

  She looked at Zara with a questioning look. Zara nodded back.

  Alex had seen the way Zara had taken to the girls and the girls to her.

  She won’t let any harm come to those girls.

  Conversation faded away as they waited for a sign of anyone else making it down the tunnels. It was morbid, waiting to see if anyone else had survived.

  If there were Angel Killers along for the attack, none of the Light mages would have stood a chance against so much power.

  None but Zara. But she couldn’t have taken out every Angel Killer on her own.

  Dawn was peaking through the windows when a rap came at the front door. Draconel walked through the portal a moment later, then turned to unlock it from the inside.

  Ethan, Catalina, and a young boy Alex didn’t recognize followed him in. Two more male mages brought up the rear and closed the door behind them.

  “I found these five wandering a passageway, pinned down by Dark mages. Ethan was holding his own, but it was only a matter of time before they surrounded their position.”

  Alex rose, his exhaustion making him wobble and grab at the back of the chair for support.

  “Where were you during the attack? With you to help, the Light mages might have beaten them back!”

  Draconel frowned at him. “I was attending to other business. After two weeks of training Zara, I needed to look after other things. I am an archangel, after all, and while I have extensive powers, they do not yet include being in two places at one time.”

  Alex flushed, an annoying mortal reaction to rebuke that he hadn’t yet learned to control.

  “What does it look like over there? You walked through Lighthaven?”
>
  The others had leaned forward in their seats, shaking away their tiredness.

  The archangel nodded. “By the time I returned, the fighting was over. It looked like most of the adults had formed a resistance, but it had been crushed. They were outmatched and overpowered by the Angel Killers who’d been along on the raid.”

  Faces fell around the room. Alex didn’t know many of the Light mages very well, but Sophie had spent her entire life at the enclave, and Grace had been there for a couple of years. Their lives had just taken a dramatic turn for the worse.

  “That’s not all,” Draconel continued. “I’m certain they had demons with them. It’s the only way they could have obscured my senses for long enough to prevent me from returning to give aid during the attack. I fear this is a sign that Hell is gearing up to declare open war on Heaven. The world will never be the same.”

  Zara sank her head into her hands, trying to find the peace and balance inside herself. She hummed her calm-inducing song, letting the notes guide her mind to a more stable place.

  She’d retreated to a bedroom after Draconel spoke his piece. She had so many deaths on her conscience. If it weren’t for her, the Angel Killers wouldn’t have attacked Lighthaven. He didn’t say it, but she didn’t need him to.

  She ignored the soft knock on the door—she didn’t want to see anyone, needed to process the things she’d seen and done over the past twelve hours. A ruthless, bloodthirsty side of herself she’d never seen before had taken control of her actions, demanded blood, and she’d bowed to its will.

  Worse, she didn’t even feel bad about it.

  Was she a monster?

  The door cracked open, and Alex stuck his head through.

  Zara didn’t have the heart to tell him to go away. She was glad to see him, but there was just too much swirling around in her head.

  He took her silence as assent and came in, closing the door behind him. Crossing the room, he sat beside her on the bed and put his arm around her like he did that night at the hotel after the second attempt by the Dark mages to kidnap her.

  She put her head on his shoulder, taking in comfort she wasn’t sure she deserved.